Senior Cloud Application Engineer Swarm Systems

RED CAT HOLDINGS•Remote , OH

1d•$120,000 - $200,000•Onsite

About The Position

Apium Swarm Robotics (ASR) is revolutionizing swarm autonomy software for air, surface, undersea, and ground vehicles operating across dual-use commercial and defense environments. Our systems are deployed on real platforms, tested in the field, and delivered to customers operating in complex, uncertain, and safety-critical conditions. We do not build research prototypes or slideware. Our software is integrated into real vehicles, tested in the field, and delivered to customers who depend on operational reliability, speed of execution, and mission relevance. We prioritize performance over hype. ASR systems represent the next phase in autonomy: collaborative swarming. These are not like pre-programmed drones for light shows. We are creating real-time cooperative management that lets one operator control dozens to hundreds of vehicles in real-time with the ease of controlling a single vehicle. As such, this role requires comfort with responsibility, ambiguity, and operational accountability. ASR seeks a Senior Cloud Application Engineer to design, build, and operate the cloud-based applications and services that run ASR’s swarm simulation, delivery, and integration platform. This is a deeply technical individual contributor role centered on AWS, responsible for taking the Apium Swarm Simulator to the cloud and turning it into a multi-tenant service used for training, software validation, sales operations, and customer modeling of their planned operational environments. The focus is on the applications and services that run on the cloud, rather than on building the underlying platform primitives from scratch. A central part of the role is connecting the cloud environment to ASR’s CI/CD pipeline so that the latest software artifacts are automatically available and selectable in the simulator. Users should be able to run against a rolling latest build or pin to a specific release that models the software on their current physical assets. You will build the simulator service to run within a multi-tenant, firewalled model that keeps each customer and partner isolated from one another’s data, partnering with platform and security colleagues on the underlying isolation boundaries, and you will design the customizable, permissioned access to logs that partners need for their own development. This is also a customer and partner-facing role. You will work directly with partners to help them integrate against ASR’s virtual API for test integration, and you will translate their needs into secure, well-scoped access to the simulation environment. A further core responsibility is using the cloud to run large-scale, stochastic simulation as an automated release gate: executing the simulator many times over in time-accelerated runs to gather statistically meaningful test data and benchmark a candidate build before it is published and before mission engineers take it to the field. The initial environment is AWS commercial. As ASR’s government and defense business grows, there is an opportunity to grow into hardened and regulated environments (such as AWS GovCloud and the associated compliance regimes) over time, but that is not a day-one requirement of the role. This role is based on-site at ASR’s San Diego, California facility. The right candidate is fluent across the AWS compute spectrum, has strong opinions grounded in real trade-offs about when to reach for virtual machines, managed containers, or serverless, and treats security and cost as first-class design constraints rather than afterthoughts. This is a senior, foundational hire. As the first dedicated owner of ASR’s cloud application layer, you will set technical direction and standards for how ASR builds and ships cloud software, and you will have a clear path to grow into broader ownership of the domain, including technical leadership and, over time, building and leading a team as the cloud footprint expands. We are hiring for someone who can do the work now and grow into leading it.

Requirements

Must be a US Citizen
7+ years of professional cloud application, cloud engineering, or platform engineering experience, primarily on AWS, including a track record of owning significant systems end to end
Hands-on expertise across the AWS compute spectrum, including EC2, ECS, EKS, Fargate, and ECR
Demonstrated experience building and deploying applications that run within multi-tenant or isolated environments, keeping tenant data separated
Experience implementing authentication and authorization using AWS-native services such as Amazon Cognito and IAM, following least-privilege best practices
Strong understanding of the trade-offs between cloud deployment strategies (virtual machines, scaled containers, and serverless)
Experience orchestrating large-scale, parallel, or distributed compute workloads in the cloud, such as batch simulation, Monte Carlo runs, or other high-throughput jobs
Experience connecting cloud environments to CI/CD pipelines, including artifact management and release selection
Proficiency with Git and GitLab, and a track record building robust CI/CD and automated test environments
Demonstrated technical leadership, including setting standards, driving architectural decisions, and operating effectively in ambiguity with minimal direction
Comfort working independently with limited oversight
Ability to remain calm and effective under operational pressure

Nice To Haves

Experience with infrastructure-as-code tooling such as Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, or AWS CDK
Experience running simulation, modeling, or other compute-intensive workloads in the cloud
Simulation or modeling background, including experience designing and running stochastic or Monte Carlo simulations and interpreting the resulting statistical data
Experience building automated benchmark, regression, or performance-gate systems that block releases failing to meet defined criteria
Familiarity with distributed compute and job-orchestration tooling (AWS Batch, Step Functions, Ray, Dask, or similar) for parallelized simulation workloads
Kubernetes expertise (EKS or self-managed), including multi-tenant cluster design and network policy
Experience with observability and logging stacks (CloudWatch, OpenSearch, Grafana, Prometheus, or ELK)
Experience designing and documenting APIs, and supporting external partners in integrating against them
Interest in and aptitude for growing into regulated environments over time, such as AWS GovCloud, NIST SP 800-171, and Authority to Operate (ATO) under NIST SP 800-53
Any exposure to FedRAMP, DoD Cloud Computing SRG, IL4/IL5, or other regulated cloud environments (helpful but not required)
Relevant AWS certifications (Solutions Architect, DevOps Engineer, or Security Specialty)
Experience with cost optimization and FinOps practices for cloud workloads
Experience with secure software supply chain practices, artifact signing, and container image scanning
Prior experience at a defense technology company or in an ITAR/EAR-regulated environment
Experience with hybrid or edge-to-cloud architectures, including operation over constrained or intermittent links
U.S. security clearance or ability to obtain one

Responsibilities

Design, build, and operate the cloud infrastructure that runs the Apium Swarm Simulator for training, software validation, sales operations, and customer environment modeling
Integrate the cloud environment with ASR’s CI/CD pipeline so the latest software artifacts are automatically available and selectable in the simulator, supporting both rolling latest builds and pinned specific releases
Build and deploy the simulator and related services across AWS compute (EC2, ECS, EKS, Fargate, ECR) within a multi-tenant, firewalled model, partnering with platform and security colleagues on the underlying isolation boundaries so that customers and partners cannot access one another’s data
Integrate application authentication and authorization using AWS-native services (such as Amazon Cognito and IAM), following least-privilege best practices
Design customizable, permissioned access to logs and telemetry to support partner development at varying levels of visibility
Work directly with partners to help them integrate against ASR’s virtual API for test integration, serving as a technical point of contact
Select appropriate cloud deployment strategies (virtual machines, managed and scaled containers, or serverless) based on performance, cost, and operational trade-offs
Contribute to infrastructure-as-code, observability, and cost management for the services you build, and help establish operational runbooks and incident response in partnership with platform colleagues
Establish and uphold cloud engineering standards, including secure CI/CD, automated testing, and repeatable, auditable deployments
Serve as the directly responsible individual for the cloud application domain, setting technical direction, architectural standards, and best practices that other engineers adopt
Mentor engineers and provide technical guidance on cloud application design, and help scale the team’s cloud capability as ASR grows
Build cloud-based benchmark and regression testing that runs stochastic, time-accelerated simulations at scale (1 to N runs) to gather statistically meaningful performance and reliability data on each candidate build
Integrate large-scale simulation benchmarks into the release process as an automated quality gate, so that a build must clear defined benchmark thresholds before it is published or handed to mission engineers for field testing
Orchestrate parallel and distributed simulation workloads efficiently across cloud compute, managing scale, cost, and run time (for example through batch, spot, or autoscaling strategies)
Aggregate, store, and report simulation results, including pass/fail criteria, statistical summaries, and trend analysis across releases